Rapist gets life — but he's missing

By Craig Kapitan |
July 24, 2012
| Updated: July 24, 2012 11:51pm

It took jurors less than 15 minutes Tuesday to decide that Anselmo Rodriguez should serve life in prison without parole for the repeated rapes of two young girls, including a 5-year-old who developed genital warts.

Now authorities just have to find him.

As his sentencing hearing began Tuesday with an empty chair at the defense table, jurors in 186th state District Court were told Rodriguez, 31, cut off his GPS ankle monitor the night before and hadn't been seen since.

A jury deliberated about 30 minutes before finding him guilty of continuous sexual abuse of a child, which carries a minimum sentence of 25 years in prison, at about 4:45 p.m. Monday.

Slightly more than 30 minutes later — after he was allowed to leave the courtroom on bond — Bexar County's pre-trial services department received a “strap tamper” alert from the company that runs the monitoring system, bond officer David Reyes testified.

Rodriguez's cellphone was no longer receiving calls and neither his family nor his attorneys could say where he was, Reyes said. A warrant for his arrest was requested and signed two hours after he went missing.

Rodriguez was initially arrested in January 2011 after two sisters, 5 and 7, made outcries following a doctor's appointment in which the genital warts were found on the youngest child.

The defendant denied he molested the girls and didn't act like a guilty man, defense attorney Libby Wiedermann said, explaining that he volunteered to get tested for sexually transmitted diseases.

Genital warts are not included in STD screens, but he wouldn't have known that, she argued.

“Obviously I'm in a difficult predicament here because I don't really have a client here to defend,” Wiedermann told jurors during closing arguments as she asked that they punish him only for the crime he was convicted of.

Prosecutor Catherine Hayes stood beside Rodriguez's empty chair for much of her arguments.

“He is a violent offender ... and he is out there on the streets,” Hayes said. “He needs to be sent a message that we're going to find him and (he's) going to prison for life.”

While some defendants have cut off their ankle monitors before trials, it's very rare that a disappearance occurs after a guilty verdict, said First Assistant District Attorney Cliff Herberg.

Prosecutors frequently ask that a defendant previously free on bond be returned to jail after being found guilty but didn't do so Monday. State District Judge Maria Teresa Herr also could have made the call without a request.

The district attorney's office has requested assistance from the Lone Star Fugitive Task Force in locating Rodriguez.

“We usually get them back pretty soon,” Herberg said. “The idea of living on the run is more romantic on TV than it is in real life.”